In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.

— Mother Teresa

Pay attention to the gap — the gap between two thoughts, the brief, silent space between words in a conversation, between the notes of a piano or flute, the gap between the in-breath and out-breath.

When you pay attention to those gaps, awareness of “something” becomes — just awareness. The formless dimension of pure consciousness arises from within you and replaces identification with form.

— Eckhart Tolle

Through the journey of life, we often encounter negative thoughts, thoughts of fear, thoughts of worry, of anxiety. We need to understand that these thoughts are just thoughts, they are impermanent, unreal. A thought comes, and then goes, another thought comes and then goes, and so on. The real problem is when we identify ourselves with these thoughts and give them an unwanted sense of reality. When we give it to them, they multiply and make a bid to rule over us.

Just as clouds come and go in the sky, thoughts come and go in the space of mind. You are not the thoughts, you are the pure awareness in which thoughts come and go, pure awareness that is ever present, ever calm like the sky. Even when we find ourselves so enveloped by the world of thoughts, we can pay attention to the little gap between two thoughts and get a glimpse of the pure awareness. Even a little glimpse, and the identification with thoughts begins to cease. To the extent we become aware of our true nature as space like awareness, the thoughts disperse themselves quickly, and we find these thoughts are just little things that have absolutely no effect on us. There is peace, bliss, serenity.

Photo by kaneda99

Somebody came and asked a saint, “What do you think about this particular situation?” The saint said, “Where is the time to think about anything? I have no time to think.” This statement is difficult to understand: “I have no time to think.” But how can you think when you are in the present, when you are aware, when you are in the now totally? Thinking is like a chewing gum. It doesn’t produce anything. You can think only those things which you know. And once you know, what is the need to think about it? And you can’t think something which you don’t know. How can you? It is not possible. Ultimately, thinking is useless!!!

— Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, God Loves Fun

—Saint Teresa of Avila